King tide
Everything, everywhere, all at once in a wild 12 months.
Biden accepts reality. Kamala takes the reins. The Olympics inspire. The odiousness of JD Vance becomes clear to all. Walz joins the ticket. The stock market takes a breather. You take a couple of weeks to uproot your life, and all you’re reminded of is how we’re simply swept along by the daily tide.
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
The man who wrote that, John Hughes, was famously from Chicago’s north shore. His string of seminal films in the 1980s were all set there: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Home Alone1, The Breakfast Club2, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Uncle Buck, the Vacation movies, and Planes, Trains & Automobiles. There’s a reason Hughes viewed the area as idyllic, and the world viewed American teenage life through that lens.
But …
I’m now back in Connecticut, which is idyllic and beautiful but less Bueller and more Stepford Wives. Elevator Girl and I semi-seriously joked we were still in the bargaining phase of grief right until I got the keys to my apartment and she hopped on a plane back to Chicago. That was the threshold for grudgingly moving into the acceptance stage, but it also means we’re a step closer to building the life we want.
Yet life does move pretty fast. It was little more than a year ago that I suddenly felt the urge to write. The divorce process was under way and I’d spent a long time examining why, how, and who I was and where I’d ended up. Finding my way back to myself after years of compromise and sacrifice sparked a need to write for no-one but myself, and on August 2 last year I published my first post.3
This is my 75th. I’ve written about whatever takes my fancy, from social media to politics to menswear, the need to have more sex, my love of all things Italian, and everything in between. More than anything, I’ve tracked the state of my life and mind for 12 months where—in the blink of an eye—a marriage ended, I became myself again4, and I unexpectedly met someone I’ll spend the rest of my life with.5
So, it feels like a fresh chapter is beginning a year into this grand experiment of whatever this writing is. As I type, my boys are in my new apartment, happy and relaxed and eating me out of house and home (I’ve further morphed into my father by asking my eight year old if he has hollow legs). Elevator Girl is in Chicago but I’ll be there for a visit in two days’ time, and we’re adjusting to this blink of time apart (OK, it’ll be 10 months or so). And we’re thinking about the house we want when we’re together again, the life we’re building, and counting all the ways life is beautiful, even when it hits you from every direction all at once.
In study after study, dying people express five core regrets:
Not living a life of authenticity.
Working too hard at the expense of their relationships.
Not having the courage to express their feelings.
Not staying in touch with friends.
Not letting themselves be happier.
I’m trying to be a better friend, especially as I regret not staying in touch more often. I’ve long pursued work-life balance because, in the words of Don Henley, work “doesn't keep me warm.” And I think points 1, 3, and 5 are so closely related as to be one overarching action. It’s by being truly yourself—innumerable flaws and all—that you are able to be vulnerable and attract someone at the same point in their life, willing to love and catch each other unconditionally. I’m not sure there’s a secret formula for happiness, or if happiness is even an objective in and of itself. But living a life that feels right, with the right people beside and around you, comes pretty close.
Note: The title is from the fantastic Neil Finn song, which is worth listening to on repeat. The key verse?
And the hunger inside
Won’t go away, it’s starting to rise
And the longer you hide
The more you deny
And the sea rushes in
My take? You either pay attention to and address the yearning you feel, or life will eventually address it for you.
The Home Alone house is in Winnetka, just up the road from where I lived. It recently hit the market for a pretty preposterous $5.25 million but sold immediately … seems awfully pricey given your life is constantly interrupted by gawking tourists. And at Christmas? Total insanity.
Elevator Girl actually attended the high school that was the model for this movie, complete with something north of 5,000 students. It’s a scene, man. But a fun fact: its at-the-time-unused secondary campus has a pool which was used as the set for filming the flooded house scenes in Home Alone.
It was about Donald Trump actually sorta kinda starting to be held accountable for a life of criminality. The wheels of justice still turn slowly, obvs.
Sounds grandiose, but when your mum says, “It’s nice to have you back,” you know it’s true. I wandered in the wilderness for 20-odd years. It was time to come home.
I’m a hopeless romantic. But love’s a funny thing. When each of my boys were born, I was struck by that sense all parents get: a feeling of love and devotion deeper than anything you could have possibly imagined; the moment you realize you’d willingly lay down your life for someone else. I thought I’d experienced true love romantically too, but when you’re not authentically yourself, the love you feel isn’t either. Now? It’s quite something. IYKYK, as the kids say. Kudos to mum again, who declared to anyone who’d listen, “He’s finally got it right!” Let’s not get into why she didn’t warn me earlier …
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.
👍😊